Video Beyond Surveillance

• By Steven Titch
• Jun 20, 2007

Once enterprises have video cameras everywhere, is there more they can extract in terms of productivity?

In a network-centric environment, introduction of digital video also mean integration of digital video. What was once a tool with a sole purpose, namely surveillance, can be transformed into an “input” for more general business processes.

Once IT directors get some experience with digital video, it isn’t long before they begin to explore other applications beyond the traditional eye-in-the-sky. Security chiefs should take note because, given the higher costs of digital cameras and management software, return-on-investment arguments are the foundation of any procurement approval.

With cameras proliferating in organizations, be it on assembly lines or sales counters, video can be used for training and productivity-enhancement. Plus, when video becomes another aspect of the business process, it takes the edge off the “Big Brother” overtones that surveillance might engender.

Spend anytime with Eric Fullerton, president of the U.S. office for Milestone Systems, a Brondby, Denmark-based manufacturer of video management software, and the use of video as a training tool invariably comes up. Fullerton compares it to the way that football coaches use images culled from TV coverage to make in game adjustments. For example, an offensive coordinator in the skybox might see a consistent vulnerability in a defensive formation that his quarterback can exploit. After transmitting the image down to the sideline, the head coach and the quarterback can insert a play to take advantage of the newly detected weakness.

Taking a page from the gridiron, a coffee shop chain can review video from its stores to see how employees handle the flow of customers and orders at busy times. Video can provide a picture of how employees work together in groups. From there, managers can devise adjustments and insert “plays” to ensure the process works quickly and easily for customers.

The idea isn’t so much to single out poorly performing employees, which might lead to low morale, but to identify potential chokepoints that lead to delays and long lines and devise ways to deal with them.

The fast food industry has been working this problem for years. When run efficiently, the process can be a thing of beauty. The customer walks in, places an order with one employee, another gathers the food, a third rings it up. But when it breaks down, the customer ends up repeating the order multiple times to multiple employees who, from the customer’s point of view, seem to be scrambling around in a chaotic frenzy. Lines form, people leave the store and sales are lost. Starbucks last year blamed consumer frustration with long lines for a slowdown in sales.

Video review can bring order to this frenzy. In an industry marked by high labor costs yet pencil-thin margins, managers can better answer questions such as when to open a register, how to best rotate workers from the back of the store to the front, and whether there are enough personnel in the shop at peak times.

All of this knowledge can then be incorporated into manager and employee training, says Fullerton.

Network-centric video is more than just IP cameras. Once video is on the corporate network, it morphs into a strategic tool. Upper management then begins to see the corporate video network more as an asset than a cost, which is exactly what IT managers want. Likewise, the more security directors are open to understanding the strategic framework in which they now operate, the more successful they and their enterprises will be.